When President Assad or Colonel Gaddafi watches Star Wars – which surely sometimes happens – whatever do they make of it? Do they tut and nod about the sad necessity of Darth Vader's strong leadership, and the difficulty of finding a good henchman nowadays? I ask because, among the many stories told about dictators (usually by men), very few are on the tyrant's side.

By far the largest group are the biographies and based-ons. George Orwell neither fooled anybody, nor tried to, with his meticulous allegory of Stalin's Russia, Animal Farm. Unusually, the book begins with a dictator's overthrow, when farmer Jones is defeated, then shows Napoleon the pig's slow progress towards becoming his replacement.

Bruno Ganz's portrayal of Hitler in Downfall has become perhaps the most memorable performance in the category, thanks partly to its brilliance, but mostly to its aptness for revision on YouTube. Charlie Chaplin made rather more deliberate comedy out of Hitler in his first talkie, and arguably his finest film, The Great Dictator.

The Who actually prefigured Hergé's sentiments, and echoed Orwell's (whether they realised it or not) in Won't Get Fooled Again: "Meet the new boss/ Same as the old boss." The same crazed delight appears in Pink Floyd'sIn the Flesh. Aussie/German rockers Crime and City Solution look at things the other way around in The Last Dictator, a sad imagining of a tyrant contemplating his defeat – a theme later revisited by Coldplay in Viva La Vida. And we will sidestep, for now, Mel Brooks's heroically misguided rap from 1981, It's Good to Be the King.